Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections From the Writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections From the Writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan Germany had been consolidating the empire estab lished in 1871. When William II ascended the throne in 1888, the ambitions of both ruler and nation were already turned toward colonial ex pansion and world power. A German Admiralty separate from the War Office was established in 1889; Heligoland was secured a year later; the Kiel Canal was nearing completion. In England, the Naval Defense Act of 1889 provided an in crease of seventy ships during the next four years. The rivals against whom she measured her naval strength were still France and Russia. In the United States, Congress in 1890 authorized three battleships, the first vessels of this class to be added to the American navy. During the following ten years the rivalry of nations was chiefly in com mercial and colonial aggrandisement, marked by the final downfall ofi Spain's colonial empire and a greatly increased importance attached to control of the sea. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.